Research and development are driven by businesses

In 2022, the annual expenditure on research and development in the Czech Republic increased by nearly 10%, reaching 133.3 billion Czech crowns. The increase of over ten billion crowns is primarily due to corporate resources. By the end of 2022, the number of employees in research and development had reached 123,000 people, which is 15,000 more than five years ago.

Between 2013 and 2022, a total of one trillion Czech crowns were spent on research and development, with the record amount of 133.3 billion crowns in 2022. On an annual basis, research and development spending increased by 9.3%, which represents an absolute increase of 11.4 billion. This is a similar increase to that of 2017 and 2018, but with significantly higher inflation. At constant prices, research and development expenses remained approximately at the previous year’s level.

“In 2022, research and development spending in the Czech Republic represented 1.96% of the GDP, compared to 2.0% in the previous year. In recent years, we are still below the European Union average of about 2.3% of GDP and significantly lag behind countries like Germany and Austria, for example. Since 2017, they have spent over 3% of GDP on research and development,” explains Martin Mana, director of the development statistics department at CZSO.

Research and development spending has grown primarily in businesses. Last year, a record amount of 85.6 billion Czech crowns was invested in research and development here. 91% of this amount was financed by companies with their own resources or other corporate resources, with the rest coming from public funds. Annual research and development expenses in the commercial sector increased by 11.8%, an absolute increase of 7.4 billion crowns. In the higher education and government sectors, during this period, they increased by 5%, representing an absolute increase of about one billion in each of the two sectors.

National public sources represented 30% of the funding for research and development. A total of 40.4 billion crowns were spent on this activity from public budgets last year, one billion more than the previous year. Although it was a record amount, the growth rate has slowed significantly compared to the significant increase in state funding for this activity between 2017 and 2019.

“In 2022, a total of 9.5 billion crowns from foreign public resources were used for research and development, primarily consisting of EU funds. This is the highest amount since 2015 when foreign public support even reached 13.8 billion crowns. In the years 2012-2015, the major support went to the construction of new research centers in the public sector; however, in recent years, companies have started to use EU subsidies more for research and development,” emphasizes Marek Štampach from the Department of Development Statistics at CZSO.

In 2022, a total of 123,000 people worked in the field of research and development in the Czech Republic. In terms of full-time employment dedicated to research and development, there were 86,100 people. The number of workers increased by less than 2% year on year. Women have long represented less than one-third of the workforce in the research and development sector, and in the business sector, the representation of women is even less than 20%.